Play To The Fingertips
by treeflamingo
Summary: It was an understanding which could not be shared deliberately, and which she did not believe he could possibly possess.  But he did.  Set an indefinite amount of years post-manga, established KyokoxRen.  No spoilers.  Genre: introspection.


**A/N: **Written from the LJ community 31_days based on the prompt "Poetry is the street talk of angels and devils." Fic 3 of 3 of my mini xpost!spam. I apologize if Sho is OOC - this fic is set at an indeterminate time in the future so I assume he's changed at least a little bit. I fear I may have stretched him too far though... Let me know?

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**Play To The Fingertips**

There were times when Kyoko would read a line of dialogue and her heart would ache. She harmonized with her characters, she felt their presence like quiet melodies in her soul, and so when she read for them and realized that the writers had gotten their thoughts _just right_, she felt a stirring. As though a new breed of beauty had been born and she was the first one to see it. (In later years, this would become her method for choosing characters: if they sang to her when she read them.)

She felt the same sort of excited, fluttering ache while acting, sometimes, too. She could tell when another actor breathed their character the way she breathed hers. The whole scene felt different, their interactions were of a caliber altogether higher; even off-screen, she found herself wide-eyed with them, unable to disconnect from the resonant glory of the moment. (Kotonami Kanae was the first, Amamiya Chiori was a regular, but Tsuruga Ren was the surest thing. (The surest thing in her whole life, but it would be a long time before she knew it (and even longer before she told him.)))

She described it once to Director Oogata, on the instance of their second project together. He had breathed deeply, and graced her with his inimitable prince(ss) smile, and whispered, "You feel it too, then? This must be why I love working with you, Kyoko-san. You read your lines as if they were poetry."

She had blushed profusely and Ren, standing in the background, had shown the hint of his jealous face. (But that night, at home, she explained it to him, and when she did his answering smile melted her to the marrow, and he whispered to her that he had known all along that she felt like that (and his heart had whispered that he felt the same (and deeper, from his blood, she could hear soft primal voices that said he also felt the same about her.)))

She tried to explain it to Okami-san once, on her monthly visit, when she bought out the Daruma-Ya for the night and all her friends – her _family_ – came to have dinner together. But Okami-san had smiled with her pleasant, broad face and had said, "That's nice, Kyoko-chan." So Kyoko new she didn't understand.

And then, on a slow day, a blessed, long-awaited, well-deserved slow day, Kyoko sat in front of the TV in their new Sapporo apartment and watched the face of a man she no longer hated give an interview about his latest album. His hair was still that stupid blond, but his eyes were still that exquisite gray. His music had changed, had been changing (evolving) since the idiot incident in Karuizawa all those years ago (when she was just a broken girl and nothing in the world he could have done would have made her forgive him). She had released her desire for revenge about half a year before she realized that she had it (because she was happy now, and he couldn't control her, and that was all his arrogance and boyhood had ever wanted to do). She supposed she had stopped hating him at some point when she wasn't paying attention – she simply ran out of time for it. But she never forgave him. She couldn't bring herself to.

She watched him impassively, aloof yet interested, as he leaned luxuriously into his chair and crossed one long, long leg over the other. She noted that his gestures were less overtly sexual, less deliberately charming, and that he was all the sexier for it. They played a snippet of a song – she could only assume it was his latest single – and if it were any other man's voice singing she might have been touched. The words were plaintive and honest. They spoke of emotions so powerful that they could not be borne, of loves without romance and regrets without solace. She thought, _I could portray the heart of this man – turn him into a woman and I could play her to the fingertips_.

The interviewer asked a question that Kyoko had not been listening to hear, but the hairs of her body stood at attention when Fuwa Sho began to answer. He turned his eyes to the camera, staring intently, as though he knew she was watching, and he meant to address _her_ (but that was impossible, he knew she didn't follow his career, and it probably wasn't even live anyway).

He said, "The songs on this album are ones I've been working on for a long time. It's taken me years to finish some of them – my latest single is one of those. Honestly, I think these are songs I couldn't have sung when I was younger."

"Your experiences in life have changed you, I'm sure. There's definitely a different quality to an artist who's been on the scene for years and is still active. It's something these newer artists just can't imitate. It's that whole sexy-mature vibe you've been exuding."

Sho smirked at the woman interviewing him and Kyoko thought she knew that smile – like he was sizing her up, thinking of what to do with her in bed. She prepared to be disgusted.

"That too," he said, with that tiger-smile, but continued, "But what I'm talking about is a little bit different. Most of my songs just kinda come to me, you know? Writing a song is easy. The music plays in my head, I write it down, and then I let the music tell me how I feel." _Braggart_, she thought. "But for this whole album, I've had these feelings for so long but I could never find the music to let them out. I was a kid when I broke into showbiz, you know, but it takes a grown man to get these feelings out."

(Kyoko balked at the thought that he was a "grown man," but he was the same age a she, and she had thought of herself as a woman for years now.)

"You've said that this is your most personal album to date."

"Yeah."

"So can you explain to me a little about what you mean by you "couldn't find the music" and "it takes a grown man"? Those are some really interesting statements and I'm sure your fans would love to hear more about them."

Sho shifted in his seat, although not awkwardly. "I dunno, Sakura-chan, it's music. I _write_ music. I dunno how to talk about it. I just feel it." He hemmed and hawed thoughtfully for a moment. "Alright. It's like this, you know when you go to a really good movie, you kinda forget you're at a movie?" (Kyoko raised an eyebrow, _He admits to watching movies now?_) "I mean, not just your average, award-winning movie," (_Pfft, that twit, no award-winning movie is ever average_), "But a _really_ good movie – "

"Could you give us an example?"

"Uh, for instance, Set Like The Sun."

Kyoko stilled. That was her latest film.

"Oh, yes, that movie was _amazing_. The characters were just so real, I could honestly feel all their emotions. Kyoko-san especially, I was so touched by her performance. I cried like a baby at the end."

(Kyoko blushed.)

"Uh, right, like that." (Kyoko noticed with pleasure that he looked moderately uncomfortable.) "You know, you don't have to think about why these guys on the screen are doing anything. You just feel it. You know? You believe it. That's what my music is like. I just feel it, like the music couldn't be any other way. But these latest songs, for a long time I didn't know what they were. You know? I didn't know what I was feeling. And then over the past year, one by one all the songs have just opened up to me. I mean, some of them are brand new, they're not all songs I started years ago, but every last one of these songs, the first time I played it on my guitar I was like _finally_. You know? _Finally, I got it out_."

The interview wrapped shortly after that, but Kyoko wasn't listening anymore. She was crying – calm, but crying. So many years she had hated him, so many years she had believed him to be just an idiot, a beautiful, talented, useless idiot.

But now, "He understands," she breathed. "He… he understands." That was the moment she finally forgave him.


End file.
